black
grey
blue
red
brown
white

The best way of being kind to bears is not to be very close to them.

Margaret Atwood

I was kidnapped by literature at a young age and never wanted to be ransomed.
MARGARET ATWOOD

Age Literature Young
I don’t think of poetry as a ‘rational’ activity but as an aural one. My poems usually begin with words or phrases which appeal more because of their sound than their meaning, and the movement and phrasing of a poem are very important to me.
MARGARET ATWOOD

Important Sound Think
The way love feels is always only approximate. I would like to be without shame. I would like to be shameless. I would like to be ignorant. Then I would not know how ignorant I was.
MARGARET ATWOOD

Ignorant Shame Way
There’s always something to occupy the inquiring mind.
MARGARET ATWOOD

Inquiring Mind
I grew up in the north woods of Canada. You had to know certain things about survival. Wilderness survival courses weren’t very formalized when I was growing up, but I was taught certain things about what to do if I got lost in the woods.
MARGARET ATWOOD

Grow Survival Wood
I lie on the floor, washed by nothing and hanging on. I cry at night. I am afraid of hearing voices, or a voice. I have come to the edge, of the land. I could get pushed over.
MARGARET ATWOOD

Fear Lying Night
I’m from the generation that had the boys’ door and the girls’ door when you went to school, and you got in big trouble if you went in the wrong one.
MARGARET ATWOOD

Boy Girl School
Hunger is a powerful reorganizer of the conscience.
MARGARET ATWOOD

Conscience Hunger Powerful
I’m bad at picking heroes.
MARGARET ATWOOD

Bad Hero Pick Theory
Nature is an expert in cost-benefit analysis,’ she says. ‘Although she does her accounting a little differently. As for debts, she always collects in the long run.
MARGARET ATWOOD

Analysis Benefit Cost Nature Running
Stick a shovel into the ground almost anywhere and some horrible thing or other will come to light. Good for trade, we thrive on bones; without them there’d be no stories.
MARGARET ATWOOD

Good Light Stick Stories
we lived in the gaps between the stories
MARGARET ATWOOD

Gap Handmaid Stories Tale
When any civilization is dust and ashes,” he said, “art is all that’s left over. Images, words, music. Imaginative structures. Meaning—human meaning, that is—is defined by them. You have to admit that.
MARGARET ATWOOD

Art Civilization Dust
I’m a novelist, and idle speculation is what novelists do. How odd to spend one’s life trying to pretend that non-existent people are real: though no odder, I suppose, than what government bureaucrats do, which is trying to pretend that real people are non-existent.
MARGARET ATWOOD

Government People Real
Victorian literature was my subject at Harvard.
MARGARET ATWOOD

Harvard Literature Subject
Show me a character totally without anxieties and I will show you a boring book.
MARGARET ATWOOD

Anxiety Book Character

The best way of being kind to bears is not to be very close to them.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

The best way of being kind to bears is not to be very close to them.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Margaret Atwood Quotes